Russell Kirk at home.Originalism Is Beside the Point
US Supreme Court (shutterstock.com)Teaching Humbly and Without Malice
Letters from Piety Hill
Sword of the Romantic Imagination: Kirk and Bradbury
A vision of the Gothic, dieKleinert (alamy.com)A Kirkian Renaissance
No other major figure in 20th century American social and political life has deserved study more than Russell Amos Kirk (1918-1994). The existing studies of Kirk are excellent, but the latest effort, by Professor Brad Birzer, surpasses all previous attempts to appreciate the magnitude of Kirk’s personal mission and scholarly opus. Birzer has a command of the primary sources that is truly amazing, and his archival labors evince the work of a superior scholar and world-class historian. In other words, a significant advance in scholarly knowledge is upon us, as well as an advance in evaluating Kirk as a political thinker.[1]
An Alternative Southern Conservative Tradition
The Haygood-Hopkins Memorial Gateway at Emory UniversityStudents at the Oxford College of Emory University can spend their semester living in Haygood Hall. The college website describes the dormitory as the “smallest, most intimate community on campus” and is the closest student residence to the dining hall. It is also named after one of the most emphatic defenders of African American education and civil liberties in Georgia during the years after Reconstruction.
The Fertility God of Conservatism
It is hard to imagine what the world of a conservative intellectual looked like in 1953. In our present age of talk radio (led by Rush Limbaugh), Fox News, national conservative magazines and blogs, and the New York-D.C. axis of Right-leaning think tanks, we regard the conservative movement as ubiquitous—and inextricably linked to politics and public policy.
The Conservative Imagination of Russell Kirk: A Conversation with Brad Birzer
Brad Birzer comes to Liberty Law Talk to discuss his upcoming biography of Russell Kirk entitled Russell Kirk: American Conservative. Our discussion focuses on the nature of Kirk’s conservatism and his place on the American Right. For example, many have prominently argued that Kirk’s conservatism is only strangely American. Birzer’s answer to this question will give these critics much to think about. We also discuss the influence of Edmund Burke and T. S. Eliot on Kirk, and we consider just what he meant by his invocation of the terms Moral Imagination and the Permanent Things.
What Kind of Humanism Do We Need?
A recent study by the Pew Forum revealed in great detail what even casual observation makes plain: Americans, like their European counterparts, are increasingly less religious than they used to be. Moreover, religious diversity is on the rise. As Western culture becomes more secular and more religiously diverse, it is interesting to wonder what holds it together. Can secular conceptions of human meaning provide a sufficient foundation for social life and political affiliation? The challenge of modernity and liberalism specifically, at least beginning with Hobbes, has been how human beings who share little more than common fear and common natural…
